Member Reviews

Whoa!!! What did I just read? My mind is still spinning out. This is a completely unique concept and I liked it. Christina Henry created three different scenarios. Celia, Allison, and Maggie are all the lead character in each of their stories. But what is real and what is fake? What exactly is going on? The repeated question on everyone's mind is why? The book is divided up into four sections. Each woman having their own time to shine. Each story becomes more insane. The intensity upping with each flip of the page. This does not mean you know what is going on, just that you have more information. Will you figure it out before the time stops? I do not want to go into any details and give anything away. Just know you are in for a rare treat. Thank you to Christina Henry and Berkley for this mind tweaking read that I will not soon forget.

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Celia wakes up in a strange house with a man who claims to be her husband. The town insists that she’s married and has a daughter but she knows that’s a lie.

Allie heads out on a weekend trip with her friends for her birthday. Once they arrive, she has a bad feeling something is off but no one believes her.

Maggie woke up in a strange place and is forced to participate in a game so she can reunite with her daughter. She doesn’t understand why she ended up there or who was behind it.

I freakin loved this book! The plot was incredible and very entertaining. I loved how all three of the stories came together at the end. Christina has an amazing way with writing that’ll have you hooked from the first page.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m gonna go buy the rest of Christina’s books that I haven’t read yet and binge the hell out of them!

This beauty is the perfect fall/winter thriller. It had so many twists and turns that I never saw coming and kept me guessing until the end. I highly recommend checking this one out.

Thank you so much to Berkeley and NetGalley for the e-arc!

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This deadly thriller kept me anxiously turning pages late into the night! It was such a unique concept for a book and a quick read! This is the perfect book for fans of horror books and movies and for women who aren't afraid to stick it to "the man"! I wish the ending was a little more drawn out and not so quick. I was left with a lot of questions but overall it was an exciting read!

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"Men always underestimate women."

In the non stop tension filled thriller Good Girls Don't Die by creative author Christina Henry the/// repercussions of misogyny is displayed in the most horrific examples.

Celia wakes up and her daughter asks if she packed her lunch for school. Her husband says he's in a hurry and kisses her goodbye. Just another busy day except Celia is sure when she went to sleep she wasn't married and definitely didn't have a daughter.

Allie just wants a nice day at the beach for her birthday when her friends pick her up in their car to celebrate but when she wakes up after sleeping in the car she's at a cabin in the woods and just knows someone will die before the night is over.

Maggie wakes up in a maze with a group of strangers, all women. A masked man tells them they have just a few hours to complete the maze and all its deadly obstacles if they ever want to see their
loved ones again.

With detailed Easter eggs of various thriller stories this clever author has created a mash up of Memento, every teen age cabin in the woods horror flick, The Maze Runner and Hunger Games.

Three women, three different scenarios, and a WTF is going on mind bender story that leads to a crazy connection reveal with ramifications for the villains who have trapped them in stories that are not of their own making but will be of their own conclusions.

I received a free copy of this book from Berkley Publishing via #NetGalley for a fair and honest review.

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The nitty-gritty: Christina Henry takes on cozy mysteries, slashers and dystopians in this fun page turner.

You never know what Christina Henry is going to do next, and with Good Girls Don’t Die she’s come up with something completely different from her other books. This was a fun, fast-paced thriller that is almost meta in the way it subverts certain literary tropes and genres, and I had a lot of fun reading it. A couple of elements didn’t completely work for me, but the entertainment value was enough for me to give the book four stars.

The story revolves around three different women, not related to each other, who find their lives turned upside down and must figure out how to get out of some very dangerous situations. First we meet Celia, who wakes up one morning and has no idea where she is. A little girl is calling her “mommy” and there’s a strange man getting ready for work. Does she have amnesia? If this is her family, why doesn’t she recognize them? Celia pretends she knows what’s going, but nothing is familiar to her. When she discovers a dead body at the restaurant where she (supposedly) works, Celia suddenly finds herself a murder suspect. Now she’s trapped and can’t trust anyone, so how does she get back her real life?

Allie has plans to spend her twenty-first birthday at a beach house with her two best friends Cam and Madison, until Cam’s boyfriend Brad crashes the party and takes them to a secluded cabin in the woods instead. At first Allie is just pissed at Brad for changing their plans, but soon she realizes someone is stalking the cabin. Even worse, there are no locks on any of the windows or doors, so there’s no way to protect themselves. And why aren’t there any bird or insect noises outside? Something is very wrong, and Allie is determined to figure out what it is.

Finally we meet Maggie, a young woman who has been kidnapped, drugged and taken to a secure facility. All she knows is that the men who took her also took her daughter Paige. If Maggie doesn’t participate in dangerous obstacle course, Paige will die. Maggie and nine other women must compete against each other and try to make it through the course alive in order to save their loved ones, but there are deadly elements to the game that make it nearly impossible to survive.

At first it seems these three women have nothing in common, but the author drops hints along the way to show how their stories are tied together. Each one observes that they seem to be stuck in a familiar story. Celia feels as if she’s in a cozy mystery; Allie finds herself in a teen slasher flick, and Maggie (who is a school librarian and well versed in YA fiction) is clearly reliving a Hunger Games type dystopian story. I loved the idea that Celia, Allie and Maggie are all smart women who aren’t afraid to figure out the truth, as bizarre as that truth may be. 

Henry’s theme of “strong women unite” doesn’t end there. The story includes some very toxic male characters that readers will love to hate, and it was nice to see they eventually got what they deserved. True, the men were more caricatures than actual flesh and blood characters, but I think they served their purpose for what the author was trying to do.

Each woman’s story is tense and exciting, and it was honestly hard to put the book down, I was having so much fun. Sure, there are predictable beats, but they worked because the author was clearly going for predictability on purpose. I also loved that Henry did a great job of making each story feel different, even though the characters’ situations are actually very similar. 

At the end, the reader finally leans the truth, and this is where the story falters, unfortunately. After such a thrilling set up, I was expecting a better twist, and it was underwhelming to say the least. But I had such a great time for ninety percent of the time, I can almost forgive the silly ending. For pure, escapist fun, I’m still recommending this book.

Big thanks to the publisher for providing a review copy.

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This is a story about all the final girls.

I loved this one. This was a both familiar, and entirely unique story. I don’t want to give any details bc it’s absolutely a book you should go into blind- but I will say this was absolutely the satisfying feminist horror I didn’t realize I always wanted.

Thank you so much @netgalley & @berkleypub for this Scifi/horror eArc!

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This is a super unique thriller. I don’t want to say much but three women, each dropped in their own story, in a reality that isn’t theirs, fighting for a chance to survive. I had no clue where this was headed but it all came together in a unique way in the end.
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Huge thank you to @berkleypub @berittalksbooks @thephdivabooks @dg_reads and @netgalley for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

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Kinda Stepford Wives, kinda final girl, kinda Hunger Games… this one was intriguing. I went in blind, and I think that’s probably the best way to do it. It’s like three confusing, inconclusive novellas, but then the last few chapters ties everything together. The ending felt a bit rushed, but overall I did enjoyed it. Thanks to Berkley for my eARC! Good Girls Don’t Die is available now.

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Thank you to the publisher #partner & @netgalley for gifting me an e-ARC!
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This was an absolutely WTF-is-happening, unputdownable, where-the-hell-is-this-going kind of book and I couldn’t turn the pages faster to see the ultimate resolution!😱

The book is initially divided into stories of 3 women - Celia, Allison and Maggie. Celia is a restaurant owner, married with one daughter.

On the surface, everything seems like a normal, happy family. However Celia is certain she is unmarried and childless. So who are these imposters in her life? Celia gets into further trouble when a woman who accused Celia of assault, is murdered. But even the murder and investigation seems…staged. Yet a woman died. What’s going on?!?

Allison is having the worst birthday of her life when her best friend’s douche bf takes Allison and her other friends to a remote cabin in the woods for a weekend trip that nobody signed up for. When night arrives, her friends start dying one by one, just like in the horror movies. Yet something is terribly off about this cabin. There are no animals or bugs. Just a serial killer. What’s going on?!?

Maggie suddenly wakes up to find herself in a Hunger Games-esque situation with 14 women who have been kidnapped to play a vicious game of outdoing each other. Every woman has a loved one being held hostage if they lose, and Maggie has to survive this game in order to go back to her daughter, Paige.

The final chapter blends all 3 women’s stories and this is where you finally get what’s really going on. I’m willing to bet money you didn’t see where the book was going to go because it’s so out there, in a good way, and I was here for it!

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Good Girls Don't Die was an incredibly thrilling and entertaining take on some classic ideas and tropes and really turns it into something unique and fresh. This book was such a ride and I'm so glad I had a chance to read it! I have loved just about all of Christina Henry's books and this was no exception.

In Good Girls Don't Die, we follow Celia, Allie, and Maggie through three individual experiences that all share some common threads that are revealed by the end of the story. I really enjoyed how Henry made each character's experience feel both classic and highly trope-y, while also managing to add in elements here and there that remind you that things are quite as simple as you may think. I think the first story, which follows Celia, was the perfect way to open this story as it really throws readers for a loop as they try–along with Celia, whose memory has seemingly been wiped–to figure out exactly what is going on.

This is an exciting journey that I had a great time being a part of, and I'd highly recommend ot any fans of thrillers, horror, dystopias, or anything that will really keep you on your toes.

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Thank you @berkleypub for my complimentary copy. My thoughts are my own.

This book in the thriller/horror genre has a very intriguing concept. It presents 3 scenarios, each with a woman trapped in a situation that represents the thriller genre she enjoys most.

CILIA wakes up to find herself in a cozy mystery! She is in a house that she knows is not hers and she doesn’t remember her husband or daughter. How can this be sinister?

ALLISON, a college student, finds herself in an isolated cabin in the woods, with her two friends and their boyfriends. She feels uneasy about the remote location and wakes up in the night to a strange noise, and the terror begins.

MAGGIE finds herself trapped in a maze with several other women. She must fight, maybe to the death, to survive, and to save her daughter.

Three very interesting scenarios! I read this one late into the night because I couldn’t put the book down! I raced through each scenario, eager to see how/if the heroine would survive! I didn’t know what to expect, and the drama was definitely intriguing! The ending may have seemed a little rushed, but the 3 scenarios are guaranteed to get your pulse pounding!

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4.5 ⭐️

Wow! I haven’t been this engaged with a book in a while! This is my first read by Christina Henry, and Good Girls Don’t Die was a great place to start!

This uniquely meta thriller tells the stories of three different women—except that their stories are not truly their own: Celia finds herself suffering from amnesia, situated in a family she knows isn’t hers, and embroiled in a murder mystery that’s too cleverly plotted to be real. Allie’s fun beach weekend with the girls gets crashed by her besties’ boyfriends, and the whole thing turns into a cabin-in-the-woods slasher situation. Maggie wakes to discover her daughter has been taken hostage while she herself has been drafted into a dystopian battle royale with nine other women.

I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that the three stories are told separately and then woven together in the end. I loved reading each of the stories, even as horrifying as they are, and I had a great time working out how they fit together. I was surprised by how well this form worked for me!

In this novel, Christina Henry writes in a captivating voice that pulled me directly into the story while the words I read faded into the background—my favorite kind of reading experience! I was absolutely PROPELLED through this book by the need to know more, as each of our main characters is determined to solve the problem of her predicament. It’s impossible not to root for all three of them.

The ending does lack a little *something* for me, maybe that some parts of the story are explained away too easily or not at all. BUT that all pales in comparison to the overall thought-provoking narrative that had me turning pages like a madwoman. 😉

All I want to do is talk about this book to anyone who will listen. Well, and read more Christina Henry books!

⚠️Trigger warnings⚠️ for extreme misogyny and violence against women, at least one racial slur, gore, torture, gaslighting, spiders (briefly), extremely close spaces (briefly), and others I may have missed.

Review posted to Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5574118505

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GOOD GIRLS DON'T DIE focuses on three women, Celia, Allie and Maggie, who find themselves in an unknown place. Celia is placed in a life that isn't hers. Allie's girls' weekend becomes a horrific trip to an isolated cabin in the woods. Maggie is thrust into a Hunger Games-type obstacle course. Eventually, they each begin putting the pieces together and focus their efforts on escaping their nightmarish surroundings.

This book is a thrill ride! The dialogue is punchy and the various storylines play upon various horror and dystopian tropes. I love how each chapter opens with an online chat thread about how readers view common character archetypes and book themes. I've found myself gasping in surprise during several scary scenes, and quickly turning the pages to see what is going to happen to Celia, Allie and Maggie. The ending wasn't as satisfying as I hoped, yet I enjoyed reading this one. Looking forward to more from the author.

Thank you to Berkley Pub for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

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Good Girls Don't Die had three compelling and separate storylines come together for a crazy finish. The setups were very intriguing, especially the initial storyline! That one could have easily been a psychological thriller of its own. I really liked the second final girl storyline too. I was less thrilled by the hunger games third one. I thought the conclusion and the resolve required some suspension of disbelief but it was an entertaining read overall.

Thank you so much to Berkley Pub for the ARC of this one!

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Three women, three stories, different and yet somehow the same.

Celia - wakes up in a home with a husband and child and something doesn't feel right. The house ... the husband ... the child ...? She recognizes none of it, but sensing danger, she plays along until she can find a way to get out and think about her options.

Allie - goes along on a weekend outing with her two best friends and their boyfriends (not the weekend she was expecting!) to a cabin in the woods. She's seen enough horror movies that start this way, that she's almost prepared when their car is destroyed, the guys go missing, and the other girls are killed in front of her.

Maggie - just wants to be with her daughter, but when she wakes up in a shipping container with a number of other women, she finds herself in a dystopian-like situation - not unlike The Hunger Games or The Maze Runner - where she has to fight to survive to see her daughter again.

Three women; three horror stories. Their stories will come together with the one thing they have in common.

I definitely count myself as a fan of Christina Henry's work and I really like that I know I will get something 'different' with each book. That said, while this is a bit different from some of her other works, it was a little bit familiar in subject matter. This is a 'final girls' book - a horror story about those women who are the final, surviving girl in the movies (and books). There've been a few 'final girls' books recently ... I reviewed Grady Hendrix's The Final Girls Support Group about two years ago) ... and while Henry puts her own dark spin on the story, it doesn't feel too different from others ... a 'final girl' is going to be a 'final' girl no matter what.

There are some hints along the way as to what is happening and I had a pretty good idea as to what this was, though the actual 'who' remained a mystery until the very end.

I did find a little humor in Henry's getting even or getting revenge to prove a point to the on the online male trolls who are nasty (mostly to women) just as her villain is trying to prove his own misogynistic point.

Christina Henry is an author whose work I actively look for and will read any of her books at any time. While I don't think this is her best work, it's still a darn sight better than most.

Looking for a good book? Christina Henry takes her own stab at the 'final girl' trope with Good Girls Don't Die.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

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When you read as many thrillers as I do, they tend to all blend together after awhile, so it’s really fun to come across one that is entirely unique like Good Girls Don’t Die. I actually kind of forgot what it was supposed to be about when I started reading, which I think only made the experience better. Imagine a cozy mystery meets the movie “Cabin in the Woods” and you’ll basically have the gist of the plot. I didn’t like the first POV as much as the other two, but that’s the thriller lover in me. If you’re looking for a memorable thriller with feminist vibes and a post-apocalyptic feel, this is the book for you!

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Three women, each stuck in a situation all too familiar-one in a small town with a murder, one in a remote cabin in the woods with a killer, and one in a survival game. They must each figure out what is going on to have any hope of escaping with their lives.

This is a really clever book, and I was fascinated by each scenario and rooting for each woman. The way everything comes together is fantastic. The only thing is I wish the small town with a murder would have read more cozy mystery than it did. I would recommend this book.

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This was a bingeable read with three women all with different story lines. They all come to together at the end to escape.

Ceclia wakes up in a life that she doesn’t recognize. The house and her family are all unfamiliar to her.
Allie is in a cabin in the woods with her friends and a killer is on the loose killing her friends one by one.
Maggie is in a Hunger Games situation where she needs to figure out how to stay alive.

It was a fast paced read with the three stories but my favorite was Ceclia’s. The author kept me all on my toes because I had no idea where the story was going since none of the characters and their stories overlapped. When I got to the end it all came together and made sense. My only compliant was that the ending felt rushed and I would have liked an explanation of “why.” Other than that, it definitely was a unique and entertaining read.

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Good Girls Dont Die felt like a cool sci-fi thriller merged with a great 80s slasher film.

It was a unique and creative story that kept me entertained.

Christina Henry is a new to me author, and I'm definitely looking forward to more by her.

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I received a gifted copy of GOOD GIRLS DON’T DIE by Christina Henry for an honest review. Thank you to PRH Audio, Berkley Publishing Group and Netgalley for the opportunity to read and review!

GOOD GIRLS DON’T DIE follows three women who find themselves caught up in stories they normally would only read about or watch in movies. Celia awakens in a life that she doesn’t remember, making lunch for a little girl she doesn’t recognize and saying goodbye to a man she doesn’t know as her husband. There are elements that feel familiar like her work cooking delicious Italian food, but a run in with a neighbor winds up putting her at the focus of a strange situation.

Allie is off on a weekend birthday trip, but surprise guests wind up derailing her plan with her girlfriends and soon they’re in a remote cabin surrounded by woods and the situation doesn’t feel right. Maggie is a single mom fighting for herself and for her daughter, surrounded by dangers she can’t believe are real.

The synopsis for this one really intrigued me and the book started off really well. I really liked how the stories starting with Celia played off familiar tropes in the thriller and mystery genres and gave them a bit of a twist. Having characters suddenly inside of the stories they’d generally read made for an interesting twist. It did keep me wondering what the bigger picture was going to be.

The book gives each of the key women their nearly full story before introducing the rest which was not what I expected initially going in. I did enjoy the first two stories the most, but I found it to start dragging a bit for me by the time we got to Maggie’s section as the reader knows quite a bit more than the characters on page by that point. Still, I was eager to see how everything resolved in the end.

I had some mixed feelings on the ending and this isn’t one that I’d necessarily recommend to readers who want full answers and a very wrapped up ending. I did really enjoy the women in the story and the overall concept, but something about the way it all came together in the end did fall a bit flat for me. I can definitely see very mixed opinions coming in for this one!

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